‘Why should we give Israeli investigators a gun to shoot the victims again?’: B’Tselem ends cooperation with Israeli military citing total lack of accountability

Israeli soldiers stand guard near the scene where two Palestinian men were shot dead by Israeli troops at the Beit Ainun junction northeast of Hebron in the occupied West Bank on Jan. 12, 2016. An Israeli army spokesperson said that Israeli forces shot and killed a Palestinian man after he allegedly attempted to stab soldiers at the junction. (Photo: APA Images/Wisam Hashlamoun)



When Mohammed Kusba, a 17-year old Palestinian, was gunned down by Israeli soldiers near Qalandia checkpoint in July 2015, the Israeli military said Kusba had launched a barrage of stones at an army vehicle. But human rights worker Iyad Haddad tracked down CCTV footage of the incident, showing the youth throwing a single rock at a military Jeep as it sped off. The car returned and a soldier shot him dead.

As a field researcher for the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem, Haddad turned over the recording to army investigators, the body responsible for prosecuting forces in criminal wrongful death trials.

Finding the evidence ended as a fruitless errand.

After viewing the tape the commander told a military inquest his soldier had poor aim, and intended to shoot the Palestinian youth in the leg and not the head, Haddad relayed.

Because of this and similar cases, B’Tselem declared today that “there is no longer any point” to submitting complaints to Israeli’s army judicial system. The decision ends 25 years of the human rights organization bringing cases to Israel’s military court and supporting investigations into the killings of Palestinians.

The decision to end army cooperation follows stalled and faulty investigations in more than 700 cases since 2000, which resulted in a 3 percent conviction rate. The rights group has in effect given up on believing in the system’s ability to correct itself, or provide accountability.

“We provide them with all of our evidence, but we feel sometimes that they use the evidence and testimonies that we provide them to find a contradiction, not to find justice,” Haddad lamented. “Why should we give the Israeli investigators a gun with which to shoot the victims again?”

Soldier misconduct is prosecuted in special military tribunals. Palestinians cannot file complaints directly against the Israeli military, nor can they schedule times to give witness statements independently. They rely on groups like B’Tselem to advocate on their behalf.

Aside from low conviction rates, B’Tselem now believes filing cases in army courts can cause further harm to Palestinian victims. The group said it will cease “lending legitimacy to the occupation regime and aiding to whitewash it,” in a report published today that outlines what it described as major deficits in the prosecuting process.

“We hoped that in this way we were helping bring justice to the Palestinian victims and to establish deterrence that would prevent future similar incidents,” B’Tselem wrote.

The group indicated it initially operated with the understanding that complaints were a path to accountability. It hoped changes in army protocol to protect the lives of Palestinians would follow.

Those hopes died out slowly and over the course of many years.

B’Tselem spokesperson Sarit Michaeli said the organization debated taking action since 2013, “a long term experience of case after case where you see again and again that the authorities are simply not providing accountability and justice,” she told Mondoweiss.

“The fact that the system isn’t working and isn’t providing accountability isn’t anything new. It’s just that in the past we didn’treally feel that we had an alternative,” she said, noting, “now we feel that there is no other option.”

The rights group said flatly: “B’Tselem’s cooperation with the military investigation and enforcement system has not achieved justice.”

B’Tselem’s director of field research Kareem Jubran related that he personally made an about-faceafter repeated humiliating experiences of informing tearful families of slain Palestinians that their cases had closed without charges levied against any officers. In a number of those instances, Jubran recalled investigations ended after cumbersome scheduling for witness accounts, often thwarted because of “bad weather,” or a lack of coordination from the Israeli military.

Because Israel’s army inspectors do not have a base in the West Bank, and Palestinians are not allowed to receive a permit to enter Jerusalem for the purpose of giving a disposition, oral statements are made at a Civil Administration post outside of Ramallah. Jubran said many times investigators did not inform the reception office at the post that they were expecting Palestinian witnesses, who were in turn prohibited from entering the military compound.

“In all of our work we tried all of the time to convince victims to make complaints. We hoped that we could achieve accountability and justice,” Jubran said.

“We started to feel shame from the victims and the witnesses when we took testimonies and when people made complaints. We feel ourselves, as field researchers that we are lying to the families, that they are experiencing the death twice,” he continued.

In the future, B’Tselem will continue to record and investigate human rights violators, including their camera documentation project. This feature of their work has perhaps been the most successful in conveying evidence of crimes.

In March a B’Tselem volunteer filmed the killing of an unarmed Palestinian in Hebron who was lethally shot at close range by a soldier who is now standing trial for manslaughter charges. After the incident the Israeli military said in a statement, forces on the ground suspected the deceased— ‘Abd al-Fatah a-Sharif—may have worn an explosives belt.

The B’Tselem video showed an incapacitated a-Sharif laying on the ground as a soldier approached and fired at him point blank.

“The fact that cameras are essential in raising awareness to these issues is nothing new,” Michaeli said, “it was such a clear cut case.”

The video spurred the military to promptly launched an investigation, Israel’s Prime Minister made a statement warning the public not to assign guilt, and the shooter was charged. The United Nations envoy for Middle East Peace called the killing an “apparent extra-judicial execution of a Palestinian assailant.”

But in other cases with video support investigations were closed without any charges filed. Michaeli cited two notorious killings of nonviolent peace activists by soldiers: Basem Abu Rahme in Bil’in and Mustafa Tamimi in Nabi Saleh, and stated that the facts in both cases were clear. She said, “It seems that the authorities literally bent over backwards to not prosecute certain soldiers and commanders for these killings.”

Advertising

About Allison Deger

Allison Deger is the Assistant Editor of Mondoweiss.net. Follow her on twitter at @allissoncd.

This is reality. Israel is a rogue nation and behaves like it is above any laws, their killers get away with all crimes, and it keeps proving that there is no democracy over there when it comes to the Palestinians. One rule for the Chosen and cruelty for others.

When is the world going to admit to this, and start treating it like the pariah it is? When will the international community stop being a tool in Israel’s crimes, accept the fact that Netanyahu is not interested in peace, but prefers the status quo, and will keep doing so until Israel has stolen all the land their greedy heart desires, and they have got rid of the Arabs from all Palestinian territories?

When Mohammed Kusba, a 17-year old Palestinian, was gunned down by Israeli soldiers near Qalandia checkpoint in July 2015, the Israeli military said Kusba had launched a barrage of stones at an army vehicle. But human rights worker Iyad Haddad tracked down CCTV footage of the incident, showing the youth throwing a single rock at a military Jeep as it sped off. The car returned and a soldier shot him dead. …

Yeah and zionists always wail about bloodthirsty Arabs. Israel is exceptional in it’s bloodthirst. A blight unto nations. It is an interesting debate as to exactly when and why it went off the rails whether before or after conception. It is not a debate as to whether it is off the rails.

@oldgeezer: I honestly don’t know that Israel is exceptional in its blood-thirst, but what really blows my mind is that a state so overtly and unapologetically belligerent, intransigent, colonialist, (war) criminal and religion-supremacist enjoys so much support.

The fact that the soldier shot him (long) after he had thrown a stone (and no report that the stone hit anything, was there?) shows that this shooting (whether toward the head or the leg) was PUNISHMENT and not an attempt to prevent harm to the soldiers.

American police also seem to be confused about their rights and duties: whether to punish folks they consider to be wrong-doers or whether to arrest them (or whether to do neither). PUNISHMENT is supposed to be the business of jailers AFTER a trial, etc.

For sure. The US keeps twisting those international arms, just so the rogue nation does not get any resolutions against them, investigations, or condemnation. Must be nice to have a sugar daddy like the US who pays for your whims and fancies, and then protects you from any kind of sanctions you damn well deserve.

“I want my quitting to be a sort of demonstration and expression of my despair and disgust with the system, and maybe as a proof that something must be done to grant protection to the Palestinians in the occupied territories,” she said, speaking smoothly in accented but precise English. “Because for the Palestinians, unfortunately, we can’t obtain justice.”

…

“I realized that all this time, by bringing Palestinians to the courts, I had been legitimizing the system, but the system had not brought the Palestinians any justice,” she said with glistening eyes. “And I decided I couldn’t be a fig leaf for this system anymore. It was very painful for me to see this, but I couldn’t avoid it.”

” Based on her diary notes she wrote several books, which were translated into numerous languages: “With my own eyes”, 1974; “These are my brothers”, 1979; “From my diary”, 1980; “The story written by the people”, 1981; “An age of stone”, 1988.

Early on she had predicted violent reactions against the ongoing occupation. Therefore the outbreak of the first intifada did not surprise her. As her work and endeavours became more and more fruitless, she closed down her office in 1990 in protest to make public that the legal system in Israel had become a farce.

She emigrated to Germany where her son had settled down in Tübingen. Temporarily she worked as a lecturer at Bremen University and later in Kassel.

Her main concern has always been a just and fair peace agreement between Israel and Palestine, and for this goal she is still as active as before, writing books and articles, giving interviews and lectures, taking part in public discussions etc.”

@Mooser
Sorry don`t understand Hebrew ? but are you intimating that the IDF soldiers are laughing because they have just had some fun live shooting practice or are laughing because they are looking forward to having some live shooting practice.

In either scenario they surely look the part of the most victimised , moral etc in the history of the world.

The first thing I thought about on reading the first few paragraphs of this article was my own frustration when various groups ask me to contact my Representative or Senators on some issue. My experience from the past is that I am usually ignored. The only time I felt like my action may have had some small effect is when I went to a sounding session with my Representative regarding the threatened bombing of Syria in 2013. Obama did call it off, but I suspect his decision had much more to do with the UK Parliament’s decision not to support him and the US military’s opposition than it did with my lobbying.

Would that the NYT had the necessary equipment to face the reality for themselves and its readers. One wonders if there is anyone on the planet with the courage to publish such an accounting of slaughtered Palestinians.

I certainly agree with B’Tselem spokesperson Sarit Michaeli’s statement above: “… you see again and again that the authorities are simply not providing accountability and justice.”

The Israeli Military Advocate General (MAG) court seems especially prone to deceptively sidestepping pressing criminal charges when wartime allegations are brought before it. You can see an example of this at the MAG court’s website where summaries of cases are provided. Here’s a link for a particular time range that was during Operation Protective Edge: http://mfa.gov.il/MFA/ForeignPolicy/IsraelGaza2014/Pages/Operation-Protective-Edge-Investigation-of-exceptional-incidents-Update-3.aspx Scroll down to Section 3 “Allegation Concerning the Deaths of 31 Individuals as a Result of Strikes on the House of the Al-Salak Family and Its Surroundings in Shuja’iyya (30 July 2014).” The concluding sentence is “…case to be closed, without opening a criminal investigation or ordering further action against those involved in the incident.” This conclusion was based on: “…the MAG found that the fire was carried out in a manner that accorded with Israeli domestic law and international law requirements.”

I have a particular interest in this case since I belong to a group here in North Carolina working to put together an incident report involving gross human rights violations occurring during Operation Protective Edge. We are requesting our congressman to submit this report to the US State Department for Leahy Law vetting.

We are looking to strengthen the case. If anyone reading this could suggest credible sources for additional information on the Al-Salak Family case, we would greatly appreciate it. A particular challenge we are facing is determining what IDF unit was involved in this incident and a determination as to whether the unit received US assistance. These are requirements for successful Leahy Law vetting.

To compound the difficulties of achieving “accountability and justice,” the Israeli government has denied UNHRC inspectors access to Gaza.

While justice may not be brought to those who killed 31 people during the Al-Salak family incident, by pursuing Leahy Law vetting, we can, if successful, remove some of the complicity of our government in those murders. Sad to say also, if we are successful, it will be the first time to our knowledge that the application of Leahy Law has resulted in the sanction of an Israeli security unit. A very sad commentary on our government, which furthermore is doing what it can to prevent Palestinians from bringing cases to the International Criminal Court.

Support Mondoweiss’s independent journalism today

Mondoweiss brings you the news that no one else will. Your tax-deductible donation enables us to deliver information, analysis and voices stifled elsewhere. Please give now to maintain and grow this unique resource.